A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag carpet.

Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying the scene.
More than anything else in the room, more even than the sodden hopelessness of the man's expression, the hopelessness of neurasthenia, this baby, tied with a strip of gingham in his high chair, arrested and held Stephen's attention.

Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience.

And this look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken aloud: "I am tired before I begin.

I am old before I begin.